Long Tail and Libraries

Libraries were never intended to provide access to only the most popular or mainstream materials. I’ve found many obscure fiction, indie movies, short story collections and sci-fi anthologies at my local library. In fact, for many years it didn’t occur to me niche items could be found any other way (maybe that’s partially because my mom took me to the library a lot as a kid).

Libraries have always done a great job providing something for everyone because if they didn’t they would lose lots of patrons – and possibly their reputation in the community. I’d venture to guess that the vast majority of library materials are checked out at least once or twice a year. Even if a book isn’t utilized a numerous number of times, the library would not automatically get rid of it, space permitting, as long as the material was still relatively current. Surely a business wouldn’t continue to carry an item that didn’t generate a large amount of revenue – thank goodness libraries and big business are different. A library’s collection grows and evolves over time instead of being constantly stripped down.

The Web has only made the library catalog larger - and long tail principles more within reach - as now many specialized publications and other electronic resources (not to mention resources of other libraries) can be searched instantly. Open source, file sharing, etc may have hurt the music and other industries but not community libraries which likely have a more endearing place in American society than the local Blockbuster.

pbwiki vs wetpaint

Like the social bookmarking sites, I think pbwiki and wetpaint are very similar and accomplish essentially the same thing in the same way. Not being tech savvy, I struggled to find major tech differences in the two and instead have listed some observations on which service was easier for me to use. Call me biased (again) because I’ve been using pbwiki longer, but for me pbwiki still comes out on top. Here are some thoughts (IMHO):

Pbwiki has a better help section - ah the help forum....a place I find myself visiting often on the web...

I thought pbwiki had more editing features and the toolbar was easier for me to navigate. I also didn’t see an icon for plug-ins in wetpaint (is there one??)

Annoying ads kept coming up on wetpaint (is that normal?) and I never see ads on pbwiki even though I always just use the free pbwiki version

Pbwiki seemed clear, streamlined and more to the point than wetpaint (always a plus for me) because I usually don’t like a lot of fluff and cutesy stuff like on magnolia for example.

I think pbwiki is more popular (I base that on someone low-tech like me who had actually heard of pbwiki before this class but not any of the other sites) so there may be more visibility/exposure for wikis created there.

Wetpaint had a lot more social features (it reminded me of Digg which I thought had a highly social, although bordering on overwhelming, aspect) but since, as I’ve said in the past, I’m a simple girl with simple computing needs this pushed wetpaint into the it’s-too-much-for-me category.

Google Docs and Students

I think Google docs is a great way online students can work collaboratively on projects. Some super useful Google docs features are the ability to share documents and monitor/create different user levels. I also think Google docs can have similar benefits for on-campus students – especially grad students/part-timers who usually are working and/or have family responsibilities outside of school.

Google docs and other social software tools can make group work easier on the whole for all students because online projects can be worked on at a time convenient for each individual student and no one needs to travel anywhere on or near Route 18 (sorry, it was a worse than usual commute to work this morning...) Plus, when a project is done one can simply cut and paste the material into other programs/websites thus saving time.

I think in general this type of document would be accepted by faculty – and eventually welcomed - especially as it gains in popularity with current students. Also, it may be welcomed more as businesses/future employers continue to implement more social software as they struggle to find new ways to offer employees flex time (via teleworking, home offices, etc). It also has some features I would think would be useful to faculty for grading purposes – or supervisors for business purposes – such as maintaining a history of changes, allowing only certain users, seeing when the project was started, how many times it was edited, who worked on it, etc.

Delicious as a Virtual Introduction

It really was interesting to see everyone’s bookmarks and the wide array of personal and professional links people from the class have chosen. And yes, some of them overlap or are very similar. One of the best things about this class is that everyone comes from such a different background, education, profession that this has become a great forum to swap ideas and info. Lately I’ve been surfing around on so many sites I never knew existed! It’s fun to see everyone’s interests outside of this class and the library in general - clearly we all have that in common ;-) Some classmates listed a few useful research sites which I’ve been quick to borrow and bookmark for future reference!

BUT I’m not convinced this is a good idea for a virtual introduction to class(mates). I think this assignment was a lot more intriguing now that we’ve been working together and reading each other’s thoughts for a few weeks. It’s fun to see how I’m already getting an idea of other classmate’s hobbies/interests from the wiki student pages, twitter and previous interactions for assignments. It was cool to see how the social bookmarking exercise both conformed to and differed from what I anticipated others would add as their favorite links.

One concern I have is that I felt I had to learn some of the simpler tech skills/concepts from the previous assignments in order to fully appreciate the social bookmarking process. It makes me wonder if other low-tech students who have never done social bookmarking in the past would be able to jump right in on this assignment during week one.